L-P school bond issue fills district with signs

LOUDONVILLE -- The spring of 2010 will be remembered as the Spring of the Sign in the Loudonville-Perrysville area.

The school district is filled with signs, hundreds of them, either in promotion or opposition to the 8.06-mill bond issue to build a new prekindergarten to grade 12 school building.

Early Monday afternoon a banner urging voters to support the issue stretched across West Main Street in Central Park, put up by village maintenance personnel.

According to Mayor Stewart Zody, another banner being prepared by opponents of the issue will be erected as soon as it is delivered to the village maintenance department. It had not been delivered as of late Monday afternoon.

At the April 19 village council meeting, as council was pondering whether they could permit a sign on the bond issue over the park, Law Director Thom Gilman advised members they had to permit both sides to erect signs if they wanted to.

"You already set the precedent when you permitted a Career Center levy sign to be placed there earlier," Gilman said.

Central Park is not the only place where signs have beenplaced in controversial spots during the contentious school issue campaign. Another hot spot was the intersection of Ohio 3 and County Road 529, just south of the Loudonville McDonald's, where a week ago two sign-festooned farm wagons were placed near the intersection. One promoted the bond issue and the other was opposed.

The mayor ordered both to be moved off the state right of way on Ohio 3, saying signs without permission are prohibited by the Ohio Department of Transportation. The pro-sign was moved into the adjacent office yard of Dr. Robert Berry, a school issue supporter.

The against sign was moved to adjacent farm property. Doug Heffelfinger, who placed the sign at the intersection, said at the council meeting he had permission from the property owner to locate the sign there.

But property owner Ellen Strang Black of Waterville, who owns the ground with her sister, Rebecca Augustine, said Heffelfinger did not have permission. Black told the Times- Gazette the day after the council meeting that she had directed Heffelfinger to move the sign off the property, and that the "permission" he had received had come from her nephew, who didn't have the authority to give permission.

The later was relocated along Ohio 3 northeast of the village.

In the meantime, hundreds of signs for and against the issue dot the countryside, from Jelloway to McZena and from the Malabar Inn to rural Glenmont.